


persephone

by thehandsingsweapon



Series: IAFT - old/archived [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, an ode to yuuri's thirst, see also: former english teacher writes poems his students would snicker over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 04:44:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14073162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: After failing to publish his final collection of poems for his master's degree, Yuuri Katsuki retreats to Minako Okukawa’s summer house on the Thessaly coast. One bright afternoon, a diver emerges from the Aegean sea: hair the color of moonlight, eyes the color of the tides. He’s an archaeologist, Yuuri learns. Not just any archaeologist. He is Victor Nikiforov, whose first book, Beloved, is one of Yuuri's favorite pieces of non-fiction literature. Yuuri’s spent his whole life enraptured by ancient myths, has wandered countless museums to look into the time-washed, smooth faces of Apollo, of Persephone. Only now does he understand why the Oracles gave such dire warnings to the family of Psyche; why they ever insisted Cupid was the one god all other gods feared. Victor unlocks something that saturates his work; makes Yuuri understand why Sappho ever wrote 'let me tell you this: someone in some future time will remember us.'Artifact III.B: Yuuri brings Victor home for the night after one of their dates, and writes about pomegranates, and won't admit that he's envious of whatever ancient magic might oblige him to stay for a while. Or forever.





	persephone

**Author's Note:**

> this occurs in-between events in my fic for the [born to make art history zine.](borntomakearthistoryzine.tumblr.com)

**III.B**

 

The days unfold after that, one miracle after another: Yuuri’s second kiss with Victor comes very soon after the first, still leaning against the car; the third and the fourth on the doorstep that night, snuck in between breathless, quiet laughter and farewells so fond that he aches. It’s difficult to imagine how kisses might come to be too difficult to count, like stars, and yet on a clear night, overhead, there they all are, like the galaxy of heroes rendered throughout the heavens. In just a few weeks, Yuuri becomes a regular with Victor’s friends from work; even Plisetsky comes around like a feral cat, nearby and watchful but never close. Together, he and Victor go on dates that are impossible to pretend aren’t dates: they have dinner in half a dozen different restaurants, and on Victor’s days off they hike up to the old monasteries or down to secluded beaches. It’s easy the way that nothing else in Yuuri’s life has ever been easy. Tonight, they’ve long since finished dinner, and are polishing off a bottle of wine while a live band plays in the town square. Victor’s eyes sparkle, darting back and forth between the musicians, and the small crowd gathered to watch them, and Yuuri himself. Yuuri has learned to wait for the mischief that follows. “Dance with me,” he asks, and when Yuuri mutters about not really being much to dance with over the finishing swirl of his glass, Victor scoffs. “Nonsense,” he says. “You danced with me at the beginning of the summer, remember?”   


This is how Yuuri finds himself casting an apologetic glance to their waiter while he pats up the syrah he’s just snorted across the table.  _ “What?”  _

“Were you too tipsy to remember?” Victor asks, with his bow mouth and arrow smile, which sails straight for Yuuri’s heart and never misses. He stands up, folds his napkin, extends one of his hands. “I’ll tell you all about it.” Yuuri’s an interloper on the arts of Terpsichore: he took lessons under Minako years ago, and a dance class in undergrad, but these handfuls of experience are different than being led across the square by Victor and swept into close-quarters. The warmth of Victor’s hand on his back burns through his shirt. “It must’ve been right at the end of May,” Victor recalls, humming into the shell of Yuuri’s ear. “You didn’t let me lead last time.”

“I got here right at the end of May,” Yuuri replies, as Victor leads him through a twist. Then he remembers, with sudden, devastating clarity, how Minako hauled him out of the house not a minute after his arrival for some start-of-summer festival, how she’d bought the first few rounds, and told him to get over his sulk. He remembers that, and his hangover, and absolutely nothing else. “... I’m an awful drunk,” Yuuri hisses, cursing the oblivion Lethe offers at the bottom of every bottle while Victor barks delighted laughter. “It’s not funny! It’s embarrassing!”

“You were very charming,” says Victor, which almost makes up for it, until he grins unapologetically and adds: “You said my shirt was made of boyfriend material.”  _ Kill me,  _ Yuuri mutters, and of course Victor refuses.  _ Never.  _ Like every other night, Victor gives Yuuri a ride back up the hill to the villa on the back of the Vespa, and like every other night Yuuri stands toe-to-toe with him, leans close, gets ready to say goodnight. Tonight all he can think of is Victor’s hand on the small of his back, the pomegranate and cinnamon notes of their bottle of wine, and the way the summer eventually ends. 

“Minako is in Paris,” Yuuri whispers, though there’s no one around to hear it other than Victor. No one to tell either of them what they can’t have. “Do you want to come in?”

“Please,” replies Victor, and so Yuuri leads him through a dark and empty house, guided by moonlight and memory. There’s a startling intimacy to the way Victor turns to him, the way he reverently cups Yuuri’s face. Yuuri’s fingers catch on every one of the buttons of Victor’s shirt, and on the planes of his shoulders.  _ Love, the limb-loosener,  _ he thinks, as Victor helps him pull his t-shirt over his head. They kiss slow and unhurried, and Yuuri’s fingers traverse the labyrinth of Victor’s body, doubling back time and time again over his clavicles, his ribs, his abdomen. If there’s some spool of thread to find his way out now, he doesn’t want it. He’d rather be lost.

Victor’s unabashed, kicking out of his pants and then pulling them back to the waiting bed, where he can draw Yuuri down into the waiting nest he’s made out of his arms. In the silver light that trickles in through a window, he’s alabaster-pale, as white-washed as the statues they’ve wandered between. He cannot possibly be a mere mortal, except for the all-too-human, wine-dark vulnerability of his gaze, or the increasing hunger of his hips and his hands. “Do you even know,” Yuuri wonders aloud, as he kisses a path down Victor’s abdomen, sinking between the rise of his bare legs, gorgeous in starlight, “how beautiful you are?”

“Do  _ you? _ ” Victor asks, though his breath hitches as Yuuri mouths at his thighs. Yuuri wants to scoff, but Victor’s face is too earnest in the dark, and he’s too cut open to lie.  _ Do you know?  _  Yuuri doesn’t, but Victor can almost make him believe it. For now, Yuuri has had his fill of words; he takes Victor into his mouth and tries not to tell himself that for every kiss, he’s swallowed a seed, soaking up time from a place he doesn’t actually belong and will someday have to leave.

 

\- - -

> **pomegranate**   
>  from  _ someone in a future time _
> 
> by Yuuri Katsuki   
>    
> 
> 
> \- - -
> 
>   
>    
> 
> 
> there is something so curious   
>  about something you tear open   
>  to consume.
> 
> the ruddy seeds  
>  the sweet interior   
>  the sticky-sweet dribble   
>  across the chin and down, into   
>  the hollow of the throat
> 
> there is always a moment    
>  poised at the apex    
>  of winter and spring.   
>    
>  it is neither   
>  the one thing   
>  nor the other
> 
> it is its own beast,   
>  a creature stitched together   
>  from two bodies   
>    
>  which knows only   
>  the word  _ oh. _
> 
> anyway,   
>  i want more fruit   
>  more kisses like rubies   
>  in the palm of my hands.   
>    
>  whole fistfuls, if i must   
>  enough to shout _ look, _ _  
>  _ _ you’re stuck with me now. _


End file.
